


What Secrets Do You Keep?

by Sketchy_Skittles



Series: Planetary Spaces [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Bell Bassinet, Character Study, CoCo Carnell, Deafness written by someone who isnt deaf, Family Secrets, Feather Talavera, Goldie Galloway, Marnie Mellour, River Runnings, Royalty, Synesthesia, These are real short lol, These arent in any order, Witchcraft, also meet my girls i love them all whole heartedly, any and all relationships mentioned here are platonic, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-07 21:22:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16416182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sketchy_Skittles/pseuds/Sketchy_Skittles
Summary: Everyone has questions,but not always the answers.Everyone has reasons,however unknown they be.Everyone has endings,alongside beginnings too.Everyone has a story.(A series of character study-esque oneshots involving characters from my P.I.T. universe





	1. The High Priestess

**Author's Note:**

> I absolutely love my p.i.t. kids yall have no idea. They’re just. So fun to write.

Her mother always told the same old story.

The story of a young shapeshifter, trading future lives to a stranger for her own. One of someone who’d never known of consequence, until she had to abandon all she’d ever known to protect her children-the only real family she had left. One of paranormal creatures tangled in human life, forever more wary of a future only one of them had caused. .

A tale bearing a moral to be wary of those she met, she could practically recite it from memory with how frequently her mother told it.

Though she could never quite understand why.

 

Just as she never understood why her mother told her everyday to hide her horns,no matter how much she protested.

Just like how she never knew why her mother insisted that she look human, no matter how strongly the desire to change itched in the back of her mind.

 

She didn't know why when she was seven, starting her first day of school with other kids.

She didn't quite get it when she was ten either, having shifted forms for the very first time.

 

But now, she stood before the mirror. Changing her hair length at will, letting her skin glide through a sea of many colours as naturally as one would breathe, she asked herself: why the story? why the secrecy? why should she hide her gift?

It was then that it hit her, sudden and heavy like a silent train rushing past the bend.

 

Her brother was too young to get it,

but her mother most certainly understood.

 

 

Bell finally knew why.


	2. The Emperor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No matter how she denied it, she couldn't stop thinking about home

The crown sat like a heavy weight in her hands, a reminder of the life she’d willingly left behind. A life of respect, and regality, a life of power and prowess.  
All thrown in the trash.   
And for what? Some useless chance to prove herself? Some source of self satisfaction?   
Munoz had always taught her to follow sense, not nonsense! Yet she’d chosen the most nonsensical path she could’ve ever seen.

Her younger self always thought city spirits were full of it.   
Then again, she once thought that of every spirit.  
Every spirit, that is, except herself.  
To this day she couldn’t help but regret it.

So what if she couldn’t have taken the throne? She had never cared for the idea of moving from princess to queen anyway. She hadn't really wanted to, but the moment she was told she couldn’t?   
Suddenly it was the one and only thing she desired.

“You’re too brash”, the high court had told her, “brash, thoughtless, inconsiderate, you never put the kingdom’s needs first, or even high on your list of priorities, and despite our many warnings you have refused to change these habits for years. For the good of the people, we can't in good conscience allow you to take the throne.”

Of course she’d protested. She whined and complained and went on and on and on until she stormed out, determined to somehow prove them wrong.

Yeesh, they were right. She really was a brat.

 

But, Runnings supposed, a change of pace might have been exactly what she needed. Almost.


	3. Judgement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She wondered and wondered and wondered all day:  
> What does the unmarked letter say?

It took her most of the afternoon to work up the nerve to read the letter. After all, her estranged creator’s assistant had slipped it to her without even a hint as to what it was about. How was she not supposed to be worried?

Finally she grabbed the note from her desk, breaking the seal with trembling hands and skimming the contents.

A...wedding invitation? Of all things, why a wedding invitation? The lucky couple-Cherrie and Tame, according to the invite-were complete strangers to her; the names didnt even ring the foggiest of bells in her memory. Maybe it had something to do with the location?

Nope, it was being hosted on Don-Shandell, a planet she’d never been to before, in a part of the system she rarely visited.  
She didn’t know the couple at all, or the place, so why had she gotten this?  
It almost seemed like there wasn’t a reason she should have it.

That had to be it. The assistant hadn't meant to pass it to her;she probably wasn’t supposed to have it at all.  
She dropped the invitation back to her desk with a disappointed beep, intent on exchanging it for a blank sheet and a charcoal pencil. Maybe drawing would chase away her malcontentment.

It was only then she noticed the writing scrawled on the back.  
Writing that, upon second inspection, had her name on it. Quickly she snatched it back up and began to read.

  
‘I really hope this reaches you. I trusted Ro to give it to you, but Im not sure if you’ll actually cross paths. It’s been quite a while, huh? Five years, more or less.  
I miss you, I really, really do. We haven't spoken in so long, I was worried you’d forget about me, or wind up scrapped, or hurt, or worse!  
I know, it’s silly. With all the worrying, im starting to sound like you. Regardless though, I was hoping that maybe we could catch up? I'm helping host a wedding and, after all, who doesn't invite family to family weddings? I’d love to write more, but it seems i’m nearly out of room. Everyone’s really excited to meet you so I hope you can come!  
Warmly,  
Ixtlilton’

Ixtlilton,  
the only other bot still left of her series,  
the only other living bot she knew.  
Ixtlilton, some of her oldest family and definitely her oldest friend, was still around.  
Even after everything, after all this time, he still wanted to see her!

 

It was moments like these that CoCo wondered why bots couldn’t cry.


	4. The Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She learned new things about herself everyday

* * *

Synesthesia, the mixing of one sense with another, was something she’d never even heard of until today, let alone knew she probably had.  
It would certainly make sense, though.

She was deaf, she had been since she was little. She watched people talk and chatter, and would half the time have nothing more than poor lip-reading skill to clue her in to what was going on. She’d always known that she was missing something, her complete lack of hearing had never really gone unnoticed.

But to have something there in its place, a melding of senses that others couldn’t seem to grasp? That was one-hundred-percent, certified odd. Especially if it let someone nearly born deaf play guitar without ever needing to hear the notes.

How she hadn't realized seeing sensations or feeling colours wasn’t right before was anybody’s guess.

Speaking of which, she picked up her prized possession and began to pluck at its strings, creating fiery reds and brisk gingers tangled in a fervent sunset, a ballet warmed by the heat of a vanishing sun and carried by the brush of an ocean breeze.

From the corner of her eye she spotted it, a rather familiar static. It crept through walls and windows nearly every time she played. Shaped as sketchy figures, it would only ever watch, content and silent.  
It seemed to stare from another side of reality, a being just like her.

Goldie wondered, were these familiar figures just synesthesia as well?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is sort of an epilogue to Synesthesia, so you can go read that if you want


	5. The Star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She tried and tried and tried, but she couldn't quite get the spell right

The scrap of paper burned up in her hand, the sigil sketched on it turning to ashes. A good luck charm was exactly what she needed to get the job done.  
Well, she hoped it was, at least.

She turned back to the bowl of herbs and flowers on her bed, staring it down with a frustrated intensity. Reaching into the seemingly bottomless container, she searched for anise and wormwood and any other divinity and summoning related herbs she had.

She’d been doing witchcraft her whole life, following in her family’s footsteps. It had always been something she’d been good at, each spell and charm coming as smoothly and easily as the next. Healing spells, luck charms, nixes, weather incantations, anything you could think of, she could do with ease.

Until she tried to summon Arianrhod, that is. No matter what she did or how hard she worked, for whatever reason she’d never been able to reach the fickle ocean goddess.  
And by all creation did she hate that.

She’d tried everything, from changing herb proportion to tonal shifts in her chant, different kinds of candles and at all different times of day. She’d even tried invoking favours from other gods to help her finish the darn spell, but to no avail. Nothing, not a singular thing she’d tried, had worked at all.

At this point that she just considered giving up. On just the spell or witchcraft entirely, she quite didn’t know yet. All she knew was she was sick and tired of getting failing results  
_Every_  
 _Single_  
 _Time._

But she wasn’t a quitter, not anymore. She swore to herself she’d figure it out, and she would rather die than be caught lying. She was a scientist, for goodness sake! And magic was nothing more than an unexplored science.

 

All sciences could be fickle at time, but Marnie was determined to succeed, no matter what.


	6. The Tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She thought she'd grown up by this point, so how could she have been so dumb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prelude to Restless

She’d always known about the paranormal, the mythical and the strange. It had always been a part of her life, which was why she felt so incredibly stupid when she realized she’d been duped.

It wasn’t just that she’d been ignorant. No, that had been when she was younger, when she spent years messing around with beings much older and more powerful than she’d ever be. The day she learned what they were, she counted her lucky stars she somehow never managed to tick them off.

It wasn’t just that she’d been careless, either. Not like she was at thirteen, when she’d drawn too messy a symbol and summoned a shadow beast, who was really more annoying than menacing. To this day she was still cursed, forced to keep him from doing any harm by remaining tethered to him for the rest of her life.   
She hoped he would forgive her after all this was over.

No no no, the problem was that she’d been both. She let L.e.t. trick her again and again, make her push everyone else away. He’d even convinced her to remove herself from the equation, freeing him to do whatever awful things he pleased.

All because she’d been too blind and too careless to do anything.

Now she stood before the basement door, a party full of people she knew and cared for raging on behind her. She hoped, for her friends’ sakes, that she was right; that the white rose really meant what she thought it meant. She didn’t know what she’d do with herself if she was wrong.

It was funny, actually. Before, she would only ever clean up her messes out of obligation, the idea that she had to fix her mistakes being the only reason she ever took action.  
But now?

She’d do it for Goldie.  
She’d do it for Bell.  
She’d do it for Runnings,  
And Marnie  
And CoCo.

Feather would do this for them, and for herself.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments would really ice my cake. Thanks for reading!


End file.
